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Being OK with not being extraordinary

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Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#91

Post by simias »

umvi wrote: post #2

> Climbing to a higher vantage point can also unlock new forms of extraordinary that you might have never noticed before. I read an article once about how the amount of work to get into the top tier in a single area is astronomical, but the amount of work to become top tier in a combination of 2-3 fields is attainable by almost anyone. For example, becoming a top tier statistician is hard. But becoming a top tier sta…

I definitely recognize myself in this. I consider myself a decent programmer but I also know quite a bit about electronics and even a bit of Verilog/VHDL. Not enough to work as an ASIC/FPGA engineer, but enough to understand the broad concepts and how it all fits together. If you talk to me about timing violations and setup times and clock trees I'm not completely out of my depth.

All that happened pretty much by accident, mainly because I was always interested in all things low level, but it proves really advantageous in my career. Basically if a problem stands at the interface between hardware and software I tend to be massively more productive than a very good software engineer who knows very little of electronics or vice versa. If we have a problem like "we have this driver that seems to lock up because it misses an IRQ, but we're not sure if it's a software race or a hardware problem" I can usually help.

Of course that's all fairly niche, but as long as the niche is big enough that's not an issue. It's all about finding complementary skills. There might be a need somewhere for a good software dev that also very good at Sumo, but that's probably not very common...

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#92

Post by EGreg »

Can we feel the same about our relationships?

Many people search for years for “the one” and an amazing connection, then settle for someone they can tolerate, and it turns out they have a good marriage and children and a lot of shared adventures. Looking back on it... would you say it’s better to have spent decades searching for Mr/Ms Right, or married the one right now you can make a life with?

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#93

Post by triyambakam »

j45 wrote: post #73
wjossey wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my career so far in a nutshell. I’m an average programmer. I’m an excellent problem solver. I have an above average work ethic. I’m an excellent communicator. Basically, I combined all of these traits and found roles that leveraged these traits to maximize my impact. Not for nothing, but this is why my liberal arts college was profoundly impactful for me, despite not getting a “top tier” CS education. My writ…

An HR leader once shared with me: "Because every hire is a compromise between available candidates.. there is no perfect hire, and no two candidates are truly comparable." It's really an eye-opening statement for tech roles, and how formally taught and self-taught/transferred folks can work side by side successfully. The unique thing about tech skills is there's more than one valid way to solve a problem or do someth…

In terms of concrete specifics, I've found having interviews with at least 3 engineers on the team you will potentially be working with to be really helpful for both sides to evaluate, and more specifically when the interviews are pair programming problem solving. You get to see how the candidate works through a problem and they don't have to code for an exact solution (or I don't think that should be the requirement anyways, it should be more about approach and communication than an exactly correct implementation , especially given limited time)

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#94

Post by mettamage »

wjossey wrote: post #66
umvi wrote: post #2

> Climbing to a higher vantage point can also unlock new forms of extraordinary that you might have never noticed before. I read an article once about how the amount of work to get into the top tier in a single area is astronomical, but the amount of work to become top tier in a combination of 2-3 fields is attainable by almost anyone. For example, becoming a top tier statistician is hard. But becoming a top tier sta…

This is my career so far in a nutshell. I’m an average programmer. I’m an excellent problem solver. I have an above average work ethic. I’m an excellent communicator. Basically, I combined all of these traits and found roles that leveraged these traits to maximize my impact. Not for nothing, but this is why my liberal arts college was profoundly impactful for me, despite not getting a “top tier” CS education. My writ…

How do you do leverage these strengths? I have a somewhat similar profile and I simply feel like a fish judged by its ability to climb a tree.

Yet, I:

- Help with hiring/marketing/leading scrum sessions (when the actual scrum master is ill)

- Conduct pentests

- Do the frontend and backend (what I was hired to do)

If they'd let me, I'd help with the writing efforts as well as my writing ability is better than that of the average developer, if I have to believe my grades on any report in any degree that I did (game studies, psychology and CS).

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#95

Post by non-entity »

chasd00 wrote: post #90

Given the massive variation and diversity in humanity, to have a problem with not being extraordinary is like having a problem with existence itself. When I think of extraordinary people i think of names like DaVinci. I'm perfectly happy not being on that level, i would be forever miserable otherwise. Maybe i lack the intelligence to see my own short comings but at 44 i'm pretty sure I am who I'm going to be. I feel…

> is like having a problem with existence itself.

To be fair, I'm sure there are more than a few people who feel like this.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#96

Post by tines »

ErikAugust wrote: post #13

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society does…

> Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do.

I would agree, as long as we differentiate between "'what' you want to be" and "'how' you want to be." I'd say that "what" is a function of other people and their evaluation of you---in the "what" category are "famous," "respected," "talented," "recognized," etc. Chasing these is vain.

But "'how' I want to be" is completely internal, and I don't rely on the approval of others for them: I want to be "disciplined," "thoughtful," "kind," "honest," etc. These are worth chasing, even though technically they do not deal what "what you want to 'do'" and could be construed to conflict with Feynman's thoughts (though I think they don't really).

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#97

Post by jrumbut »

j45 wrote: post #73
wjossey wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my career so far in a nutshell. I’m an average programmer. I’m an excellent problem solver. I have an above average work ethic. I’m an excellent communicator. Basically, I combined all of these traits and found roles that leveraged these traits to maximize my impact. Not for nothing, but this is why my liberal arts college was profoundly impactful for me, despite not getting a “top tier” CS education. My writ…

An HR leader once shared with me: "Because every hire is a compromise between available candidates.. there is no perfect hire, and no two candidates are truly comparable." It's really an eye-opening statement for tech roles, and how formally taught and self-taught/transferred folks can work side by side successfully. The unique thing about tech skills is there's more than one valid way to solve a problem or do someth…

This is also why processes are often not transferable, because the people are different.

Better leaders are always taking stock of what they have or don't have and reorienting the process rather than trying to stuff the new team into the old process.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#98

Post by patmorgan23 »

borroka wrote: post #48
umvi wrote: post #2

> Climbing to a higher vantage point can also unlock new forms of extraordinary that you might have never noticed before. I read an article once about how the amount of work to get into the top tier in a single area is astronomical, but the amount of work to become top tier in a combination of 2-3 fields is attainable by almost anyone. For example, becoming a top tier statistician is hard. But becoming a top tier sta…

I disagree. It is one those things that are said once, repeated enough and make enough sense to be believed, although I suspect they are not true. If you combine an average programmer with an average statistician, you get a profile that is not particularly attractive. If the comment that follows is: but is it not what data scientist are? the answer is that good data scientist have good (or great) programming for what…

I think the idea is be the a good (better than average) programer and good statistician radther than being a amazing top 1% statistician or programmer.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#99

Post by unnouinceput »

We all are extraordinary actually. Human race is in a continuous evolution, so absolutely any of us is an extraordinary person compared with 2000 years ago great minds. A high-school student is better educated then Pythagoras for example.

Conversely, even the greatest minds of today (Hawking, Einstein, etc) will be below high-school kids of the future.

Re: Being OK with not being extraordinary

#100

Post by jogundas »

cyberpunk wrote: post #52
ErikAugust wrote: post #13

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society does…

Eh, I mean.. Okay. Maybe this is true for the first steps into your profession, but after so many years in tech the amount of things I have to do that are, compared to my initial 'love' for tech, really horrible tasks vs the things I would like to be doing definately isn't in balance... It's a nice idea, but this "do what you love" doesn't scale. I mean, did it too, there was a day where I was super excited to be wor…

Your comment reads like a quote from Rick&Morty!
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